


Dyers Eve

by internetname



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Courting, First Time, M/M, Sex in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2020-10-30 00:27:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20805488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/internetname/pseuds/internetname
Summary: Castiel works as hard as he can to be a great friend, a brother, and a warrior of God, even though that's not what he really wants, especially when he sees the back of Dean's t-shirt. This is a story for the Fic Facer$ 2019 auction in support of RandomActs.org. Keep up the great work, guys!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArcaneRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArcaneRaven/gifts).

When I walked into the kitchen to see what Dean and Sam were up to, I confess I had no idea I was only a few seconds away from almost ruining everything.

Of course, by “everything,” I don’t mean what it has meant in the past. My near-failure wasn’t about the end of the world, my smiting of Heaven, or my loss of my army or my mind. It was just about my own interests, and as such counts for very little in the world to anyone except me.

But we are all limited to our own existence. As much as we try for empathy, human or angel, a central part of us counts our own life as the most relevant to the act of living, even when we sacrifice ourselves.

So when I say “everything,” I only mean everything that mattered to me, which is very small indeed when weighed on the scale of the universe.

But I wasn’t thinking about the scale of the universe that morning when I walked into the kitchen. I was only thinking about Sam and Dean and Jack, and that was quite enough for an angel who lives in a bunker.

But then I saw the back of Dean’s t-shirt, and that’s when I almost lost it.

Many years ago, Dean Winchester asked me what I was going to do with my last night alive and was then dismissive of my plan to sit quietly. At the time, I didn’t understand what he meant about Bert and Ernie’s sexual orientation, but I did understand that somehow he took it as a personal affront that I should die without having experienced sex.

When he asked if I had ever done any “cloud seeding,” which I personally thought was hilarious, I simply told him I had never “had occasion.” It was much simpler than the truth.

In _Paradise Lost_, Milton’s Archangel Raphael blushes at Adams’ question as to whether angels have sex, which I suppose is quite charming. Personally, I find the language more than a little tortured, even for its time: “Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy'st/(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy/In eminence and obstacle find none/Of membrane, joint or limb, exclusive bars.”

As usual, Milton got the whole thing wrong. When angels decide to mate, the last thing they’re thinking about is a lack of physicality, let alone blushing.

Still, I have to credit Milton for even realizing that angels would seek to join, as they did in droves for the first few thousands of our years. But being limited in number as we are, those who did not find a mate after that initial frenzy stopped looking. The rest of us, in human terms, delegated each other to the “friend zone.”

Angelic lovers, in fact, have a long and valued, even revered, history in Heaven. It was they who helped God in the creation of the cupids. They forewarned other angels about the behavior of humankind in terms of mating, sex, love, marriage, and the desire to be together forever.

This last part was perhaps a deficit, as angel mates never did warn us of the way humans could fall out of love and even out of desire. The concept of “divorce” took us quite by surprise, even after watching the more advanced primates exchange partners for a variety of social and political reasons.

No, we were unprepared when human couples joined in what seemed almost an excess of love, only then to despise each other not long afterward. The ideas of familiarity’s leading to hate, of “getting tired of one another,” and the like are things we angels have had to take completely on the word of humans.

Of the nine angels currently left in Heaven, four are coupled.

I cannot imagine, and I do not wish to try, what it has been like for angels to lose their mates in battle. You may sneer at me for what I considered a mercy at the time, but when I killed so many in Heaven when I was—I will be kind enough to myself to call it insane—I never took half of a couple. Even in my sheer delirium and egotism that I was God, I could not conceive of taking an angel’s mate away from them.

Listen to me. Nothing I did was good then. Nothing I did then can be mitigated.

But still, the idea of taking an angel’s mate away from them was abhorrent even then. I suppose that’s something.

Back before the threat of the Apocalypse, angel mates numbered in the thousands, and I cannot pretend I did not wish to be among their number. The idea of having someone there for you—

Wait, I’ve fallen into human terminology.

To be one half of an angelic mating isn’t about being “there.” It’s about being “here.”

Let me elaborate. An angel’s mate is never separated from them, though they are separate. The bond between mated angels means never being parted, even by galaxies.

Perhaps that’s why I actually didn’t want to know if they could be parted by death.

Now I know what I did not then, that dead angels go to the Empty. Do they somehow manage to sleep as one even there? I would believe it. The things I have seen.

Aral and Zerachiel always come to my mind when I think these sorts of thoughts. They had been together practically from the beginning, and yet they were so different, such strong personalities. In battle, they fought as one. I thought sometimes they could have taken on a horde of Leviathan and won.

But as great as they were as soldiers, I found them, and many other mated angels, most valuable for counseling. Taking on so much consideration for another as they had, their scope of thought was so much greater, so much father in range, than the average angel’s. I so greatly envied them for their ability to see so much.

To say nothing of their obvious pleasure. On occasion a super-nova alert just turned out to be a mated angel couple having a particularly passionate episode.

So that night I thought I was about to die, sitting there in Jimmy Novak’s vessel in what truly was a den of iniquity, I wanted to trust Dean. I wanted to believe that the sad woman with so many wounds on her soul was going to give me at least something of the pleasure I had seen so many of my brothers and sisters enjoy. When Dean handed me the money with the inexplicable directions not to order “off the menu,” I followed that poor woman down the hall in the terrified hope that there would be something, frankly anything, I could savor.

So then I made the mistake, or the correction, of trying to make a connection beyond the strictly physical and told her about her father. I had hoped it would make her feel better.

Even now, I’m not completely sure about the social politics of what happened after that. I only know that I did not have to couple with a highly damaged female human to please Dean, and that instead I brought him some measure of joy, or at least amusement, with her rejection.

I believe that moment was also when I began to suspect the truth about myself and Dean Winchester. At least, it is my truth. I’m quite aware it’s not his.

I have tried on more than one occasion to explain to my brothers and sisters that I do not seek Dean as a mate. I have yet to convince them. Naomi in particular never believed it, which is why at one point I was a greater danger to Dean than anything else alive.

It reminds me, as the humans say, to “keep it in my pants.”

Dean and Sam Winchester, Bobby Singer, Jo and Ellen, Ash and his notoriety in Heaven, and everything else since I took James as a vessel has brought me to a place in my existence that I could never have suspected.

That day I went into the beautiful room and vanquished Zachariah with my blood wasn’t just about believing in Dean, or in Dean and Sam. It was about everything they and the people in their lives believed in.

I had stood idly by before, you understand. My last time on Earth, a woman and her Nephilim daughter had been declared enemies of Heaven, and I did my duty as a soldier.

I did that duty again many more times, through not on Earth. I don’t know why that made a difference.

I would like to pretend I wasn’t made proud when the word came down from on high that I had been chosen to rescue the Righteous Man from Hell. I took select members of my garrison (no mated couples) with me into the Pit. The filth and suffering we encountered just made us more prideful when we pulled him out.

I could have healed my handprint from Dean’s shoulder, but I wanted that signature on my work. I was, in short, proud.

Now, I have great respect for some of the accomplishments of the Catholic Church, but like all human institutions, it tends to simplify things. The pride I felt wasn’t the problem, let alone a sin.

In fact, the pride I felt got me through that first bit with pure obedience: I left him in that grave.

I left Dean Winchester, the brightest soul I had ever seen, the strongest human I had even known, inside that grave.

I wanted to be there, but I had no vessel yet, still negotiating with Jimmy Novak. But I could have left someone else to be there, such as Uriel.

You see, my sin wasn’t born of pride, but of jealousy.

I didn’t want Uriel to be there, or any other member of the garrison. Though I greatly rationalized it to myself at the time, I didn’t want any other angel to be there because I wanted to be there. Or, more honestly, if I couldn’t be there, no one else could.

I watched Dean as he clawed out of that grave. I did try to speak to him at the gas station, and then later at the hotel, which was my mistake.

My very deep mistake.

When I saw Dean Winchester’s soul in Hell, so bright, so human, so strong, I felt my first-ever sensation of what I think other angels have felt upon recognizing each other. 

Of course, it was and will ever be one-sided. Dean has done me the highest honor in thinking of me as a brother. It is only my own fault that it’s not the honor I would prefer.

So there Dean was, whole and on Earth again, and I assumed that someone so fitted to my own desires for companionship would be able to hear my true voice. And I was wrong. It destroyed a small building and a hotel room, how wrong I was.

So I went into Jimmy Novak’s body, and even while I was walking across that sigil-scribbled barn floor toward two hostile and terrified humans, part of me was still foolish enough to think, somehow, he would recognize me inside the “holy tax accountant.”

Idiotic in the extreme. It’s painful now to contemplate it.

I remind myself that in the range of my failures, that moment when Dean Winchester shoved a knife into my heart is small when weighed on the scale of the universe. I was a stranger to him, nothing more.

But all has not been lost. Far from it.

Dean Winchester is my friend, as is his brother Sam. Somehow, this angel with a “crack in his chassis,” this “top of the Christmas tree” failure, has become a pseudo-brother to two of the best humans ever born.

I find myself thinking now of the Castiel from the Apocalypse World, a creature right out of _Raiders of the Lost Arc_.

That self-righteous comic book villain could have been I. I could have walked that path, pitted by angels against humans. I could have been something into which I gladly plunged my angel blade.

How much do I owe Dean Winchester and his family and friends? How little have I done for them in recompense?

If there is one thing above all others that I cherish in humans over angels, it is their lack of prejudgment.

Perhaps that isn’t fair. All angels have known each other since the creation of angels, which stopped when God left.

But while we know each other, we do not—I don’t quite know how to say it—we do not seek to look past the company file, I suppose.

Not all humans are skilled at judging one’s character. Certainly, not all are as skilled as they think they are. But still, they are often willing to take that incredible leap of faith. They are ready to say, “I have no real reason to trust you, but I will.”

Most of them get royally boned after that, yet they still do it.

On very little, Dean and Sam trusted me, believed in me. Even when I stopped believing in Dean, when I thought he would betray us and everything we stood for, Sam stood by him, and so I believed in Sam. And I was right.

We were right.

Not long ago, even after Dean lashed out at me in anger, I was able to stand with him and Sam as they addressed “the troops.” That was a moment of pride without any chance of sin. That was a hint, a taste—so much more than I have ever had—of what it means to join. To belong.

That’s what I couldn’t tell Dean that day in the brothel. Coupling with some injured human female, what could that give me? I received a thousand-fold more when he leaned on my shoulder and laughed.

I have already had my greatest moment of connection, my closest moment to mating, when I gripped Dean Winchester tight and raised him from Perdition. I am flawed enough to wish for more. I am old enough to know it will never happen.

And indeed, what does it matter? Dean, Sam, and so many more of them have been closer to me than any angel I ever knew.

And then, of course, came Jack. A son.

There is nothing in my existence as an angel that remotely prepared me for Jack, for how fiercely I love him, for how easy it was to bargain for his life with my own, for how greatly I am concerned regarding him. Even the delicate balance of Heaven and the prospect of a reality worse than the Apocalypse somehow does not twist my metaphorical gut into knots as drastically as my concern for Jack’s life and soul.

And so it was that I wasn’t thinking about the scale of the universe that morning when I walked into the kitchen. I was only thinking about Sam and Dean and Jack, and that was quite enough for an angel who lives in a bunker.

Ah, but I have almost forgotten what almost cost me everything that morning.

On the back of Dean’s t-shirt was a pair of wings.

Instantly, I recognized them as a part of the logo for Metallica, an American heavy metal band formed in 1981 in Los Angeles by vocalist and guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich. I knew Dean enjoyed them and that Sam and Jack enjoyed them somewhat less, but still enough to classify the sensation of listening to their music as pleasurable.

I was also quite aware that the band’s merchandise often uses a logo incorporating a pair of wings.

Yet none of this quite prepared me for walking into the bunker’s kitchen and seeing a pair of wings on Dean Winchester’s back.

Like some sort of dragonfly, my first, second, and third thoughts had been to fling myself over to him and mate.

It was only around thought six or seven than I remembered it was some useless t-shirt from a heavy metal band Dean favored I. It was only then, after that delirious near-disaster, that I knew I was just looking at nothing.

And so despite walking into a room and seeing the entity I desperately longed for as my true mate display his wings, I controlled myself.

“Nice to see you all have slept.” As I said those words, if the Shadow had come to take me to the Empty, I doubt I would have resisted. That’s a horrible thing to feel, but for one split-second I had thought Dean was presenting himself to me in courtship, and then I realized that of course he wasn’t and that I was an idiot to think he might have been; that shock of disappointment and self-loathing was perhaps the hardest blow in battle I have ever known. Ramiel’s thrusting the Lance of Michael into my side was almost nothing in comparison.

And then I felt, as I have often felt, a different sort of pride. Not one of them, even Jack, found anything wrong with my words.

In fact, they began to talk about how Jack had been comparing police reports across states and found specific word groupings that hindered their searches for similar crime reports.

I nodded in approval and thought about sucking Dean’s dick.

Ah. I might want to explain here.

You see, when I realized Dean and I would never be mated, I allowed myself to fantasize.

It’s not an angel action. Angels do not have fantasies. We live to serve.

But there I was, betraying everything I had ever known. And yes, it wasn’t just for Dean, but Dean wore the face of it.

So, yes. I have imagined intimacy since then as a physical act with Dean Winchester.

Sue me.

Over the past few years, by which I mean a small planet’s rotation around a rather out-of-the-way star, I have been accused by other angels and a demon or two of human psychosis regarding Dean’s appearance, as though the fact that he is lovely in human terms matters when I can see his soul.

In fact, I have found most of the truly beautiful souls are inside humans who do not fit their current society’s standards of physical beauty. I have wondered whether outer beauty in humans actually discourages inner beauty, but I’m in no position to judge this. My brother Gabriel once told me that physically lovely humans are stunted in their spiritual development because they get everything they want by smiling and “showing a bit of hoo-hah.” I have no idea if this is correct, and I have often wished for an older brother who didn’t sound like he was making crude sound effects most of them time.

But then, I confess, I am somewhat stymied when others accuse me of fixating sexually on Dean. I always deny it, of course, and usually I believe I am successful in doing so.

To them.

But of course I have made Dean my entire universe of sexuality. I never wanted to be with anyone before him, and I doubt my fixation will ever change to another.

With a welcome joy, I remember that evening I watched the Pizza Man and the Babysitter. It took me some time, and an experimental kiss with Meg that I cannot regret, to realize what I had seen. The idea of slapping a partner’s rear was so odd at the time. But after April I know that during sexual arousal all stimulus can add to sensation.

Even more, I have read that some people quickly produce endorphins in response to pain, even quickly enough to be of use during a sexual episode, generating an opiate-like, euphoric response in the nervous system.

However, this release only happens when fear has been eliminated from the experience, and that is one reason the “Pizza Man + Babysitter + Spanking” scenario is considered pornography, not documentary.

Lack of fear requires trust. It is most unlikely—not impossible, but unlikely—that a young woman would so completely trust the pizza man.

After I made this realization I considered whether Dean Winchester would enjoy having my erection up his rectum while I spanked him. My ultimate conclusion was no. While Dean is a man with a healthy prostate, I do not believe he would ever feel safe enough with a sexual partner to experience pain as anything other than something to be endured for that partner’s pleasure.

Ah.

I should explain.

Dean is a highly sexualized human, but unlike most of them, I have observed from our social interactions that he is not just considerate of his partners, but sexually dependent upon them.

Let me explain again. I may not have phrased that correctly.

Dean enjoys coitus primarily as a mutual, in his words, “click.” It’s one of the reasons he has no mental blocks with becoming aroused during onanism. He simply imagines a partner who is enjoying stimulus as much as he is, and he’s stimulated.

Excuse me while I admit to finding that admirable.

And yes, even personally stimulating, although this last is pointless.

So, I do not believe Dean’s sexual pleasure would be particularly highlighted, especially with a new partner, with spanking or other pain-inflicting or controlling sexual advances.

Indeed, I have seen several such approaches return less than optimal results in Dean’s experiences.

I want to make it clear at this point that I do not, and have never, watched Dean experience sexual congress, or onanism. I am only taking information from what Dean and Sam and others have expressed openly.

Is it still a breach of their privacy to take everything they’ve said publically and put it together? Ask the NSA.

All I know is that only moments after one of the most unsettling moments of my existence—a moment caused by a t-shirt, of all things—I was standing in the bunker’s kitchen when Dean, Sam, and Jack sat down for breakfast, and I sat down with them. Dean, as usual, had given me some food. It was his way of saying that I was part of the social gathering, regardless of whether I ate. Additionally, he would eat the bacon off my plate with a particular satisfaction.

Again, such a thing from one angel to another would basically be translated as, “Hey, jump my bones.” But I knew Dean meant it strictly as a sign of being family.

For the next forty-odd minutes, the three of them talked about Jack’s new search algorithms for crime searches. I nodded amiably and said a few encouraging phrases I couldn’t frankly give a flying fuck about.

Of more interest to me personally, I was fantasizing about Dean naked.

Ah, now there’s a concept angels aren’t used to. Like all other angels, I saw humans in their clothing, naked, skeletal, cellular, spiritual forms whenever I looked at them. Before Dean, the most visible layer truly didn’t matter.

Frankly, even naked humans having sex with other naked humans was, as I told Keven Tran, boring.

It wasn’t until I saw Dean and his soul—so bright, so much a comment on the rest of him—that it even occurred to me that seeing the layers of humans mattered.

But here I was, listening to them talk about surveillance methods and completely agreeing with their importance, and all the while I was thinking about Dean in his entirety, every perfect layer.

I haven’t just seen Dean naked, I made him naked. When I pulled his soul out of Hell and went to his body it was, frankly, putrid. The flesh had been ripped and bones broken by Hellhounds, but that was nothing compared to three months of decomposition without the intervention of a mortician. There were many contented worms feasting on Dean’s flesh, I can assure you.

In short, Dean’s body was a hot mess and certainly nothing I could use to shove his soul back into.

But I had been provided with Dean’s specifications to the letter by what I had thought at the time was God. Now, it’s more likely the specs came from Zachariah, but it doesn’t matter.

I used every bit of knowledge and skill I had to make him just as he had been, minus a few scars and some plaque in his arteries. I gave his liver a little polish as well.

I did not know for what purpose I had been sent to retrieve and restore Dean Winchester. It was only pride in my work—the right kind of pride then—that motivated me to make him perfect and whole. And I committed every second of that transformation to careful memory in case I were ever called on to restore him again.

So while the others talked, I used that perfect memory to my personal, wholly selfish advantage to relive the feel and smell of him as I imagined now taking him in my mouth not for my taste buds—like everything else, Dean’s skin and semen would taste like molecules—but for the knowledge of the pleasure it would bring him.

I thought of the various notes of hedonism his voice would make, the clench of his muscles, the outbreak of perspiration, the tremble of his bones. While I applied suction, I would run my hands up the backs of his thighs, over the swell of his ass, and then down again, registering every last sound and smell and—

“Cass?” Dean asked.

“Yes, Dean?” I ran over the last few sentences of conversation. They were talking about adapting Jack’s ideas to Angel Radio. “I doubt the application itself would be difficult,” I said. “But considering the limited data inputs these days, I’m not sure how useful it would be. Still, I will pass along the information to Duma.”

The others nodded in thought, while I made sure my coat concealed my erection. I wondered if Dean liked to be rimmed.

Sexual stimulation is shrouded in mystery for humans, but actually it’s a matter of basic math. The more nerve endings in a millimeter, the more sensitive the area. Throw in trust and an erotic mindset, and one has an erogenous zone.

Dean, like almost human males, has an abundance of sensory nerve endings in his puborectalis and anal region. It stands to reason that stimulation there, in the right circumstances, would bring him sexual pleasure

Again, however, what should be a simple matter of A + B = C is complicated by the mental component. I am reasonably certain that Dean has had women stimulate his anal region and that he enjoyed it. The pleasure derived from my fantasy, however, is based on whether he would be able to enjoy stimulation from me.

Could I make him feel good? Could I make him orgasm while saying my name?

A better bet would also be my go-to fantasy: me bent over a sofa, Dean thrusting into my body. The male penis has 4,000 or more nerve endings. He could blot me out of his own understanding, perhaps with some witch’s spell, and my body—my body, not Jimmy’s—would be soft and slick and hot for him.

Being more careful to follow the conversation now, I noticed when it’s my turn to speak without being prompted. I said something appropriate.

But what a new fantasy I found! Dean has been hexed—which in real life I would do everything to counter, but this is a fantasy—and he comes barreling into the bunker. Sam and Jack are somewhere else.

Dean and I are alone. The spell makes him not only delirious and desperate, but in a state that I know means he won’t remember anything. (Again, I wouldn’t take advantage in the real world, but this is my fantasy, damn it.)

Anyway, Dean comes into the bunker under a witch’s spell desperate to fuck. Yes, desperate. He’s sweating. He’s trembling. He’s—

Jack is looking at me.

“Of course” I say. “I think this could greatly improve our odds on recognizing patterns more quickly, which would save many lives.”

They go back to talking.

So, Dean comes into the bunker while he’s stripping out of his jacket, his layer of denim, and then his t-shirt (not the one with the wings). He’s sweating, and his heart is racing. A single bead of sweat runs down the line from his chin to his collar and then down further. I watch the gathering dew of his sweat, farther down as it drops, trickling between his pectoral muscles, which would be called breasts if he were female, and then down further, pooling around his abdominal muscles.

I’ve seen many images in so-called “beauty” and “men’s health” magazines (both of them savage to the human psyche), where men have a “six pack.” Dean does not, neither would I wish for one. Few men actually have the muscular placement for that particular arrangement, regardless of crunches.

Dean’s perfect body doesn’t offer up the lines of such a thing. Instead, his core’s hardness is solid, almost a surprise under his skin. Someone could lay their head on his stomach and sleep in perfect comfort, I imagine.

But, whatever. So Dean comes into the bunker and strips off his clothes. I watch sweat go down his body.

“Can I help you?” I ask.

And this is my favorite part in all my fantasies. I anticipate it like a wave.

Dean rushes at me. Dean pulls off my clothes. Dean wants, and I am there. I am a receptacle for Dean’s lust.

And Dean fucks me.

I really don’t care how. In the thousands of fantasies I’ve had now, my body remains somewhat vague. It is the image of Dean in the throes of sexual pleasure caused by touching me that enthralls me.

For hours, long after they all go to sleep, I sat in the kitchen and imagined it down to the molecule: Dean Winchester enjoying himself with my body.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

It was six days before I saw Dean wearing the Metallica shirt again. All four of us were less than twenty-four hours back from a salt-and-burn that, for once, was just a salt-and-burn. Dean was looking for the next job on his laptop. Coming from behind him, I let myself imagine just for a second that the wings I can see over the top of his chair were a courtship display.

I ended up smiling to myself.

Angelic matings begin and then are consummated with such displays. I remember when Melek and Vangelis danced for days over the volcanoes of the Precambrian Age, tipping their wings just right to catch the shine and hues of the spewing lava. Melek would catch updrafts from the heat of molten earth, almost exploding, then dip back down in a lazy spiral of prisms. Vangelis would dive into the calderas themselves, then shoot straight upward in a super-bright mushroom cloud.

And here I was, fantasizing about the mere outline of an eagle’s wings on a 100 percent preshrunk cotton men’s crewneck.

But then, that was better than I could manage, with my broken wings. In that second, I had perhaps never hated Metatron more.

“Morning, Cass,” Dean said without turning around. “Can you believe there’s nothing really all that weird going on right now?”

I made sure my face was neutral as I came around the corner of the library table to take a seat. “Perhaps the world is allowing you and Sam a day off.”

Dean snorted. “Last time we thought that . . .” He frowned to himself. “I dunno. Something horrible happened.”

I couldn’t really help snorting a little myself. “I’m sure.”

Dean looked up at me, sitting across from him, and rather decisively closed his laptop. Usually, this means he wants to discuss a serious issue regarding Sam, or more recently, Jack. I nodded in approval.

“What’s going on with you, Cass?”

I frowned at him, disappointed. “I’m fine, Dean.”

He looked at me in that way that he looks at Sam or Jack when he thinks they are lying.

“Cass.” He looked away.

I was still frowning. I ran through the past few weeks but discerned nothing of import. Then it occurred to me that he was talking about my inability to do more for them.

“I had thought you understood that my angelic power is at a low ebb because of the state of Heaven,” I said. “I know this has made me much less valuable as a member of the team, but I—”

“Shut up,” Dean said.

I knew I was frowning again, but I didn’t know why Dean said that.

“This isn’t about your angel mojo.”

I nodded, still thoroughly clueless.

“I get that you’re an angel of the lord, but we’ve still known each other, what, ten years now?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He looked at me some more. I shrugged in genuine acknowledgement that I had no idea what was going on.

Dean sighed.

I never liked it when Dean sighs.

“How can I help you, Dean?” I asked.

“You can be straight with me.”

I felt distantly offended. “Of course.”

He scowled and shook his head. “You say that, but you’re still not going to tell me what’s going on with you, are you?”

I spread my hands in honest perplexity. “I am the same as I have been for some time.” Then I had an idea of what he might mean. “I can assure you that Naomi is not controlling me. Neither is anyone else other than myself. Although, of course, if I were being controlled by another, I suppose I would say that. If there is some sort of test—”

“I’m not talking about you being controlled,” he said. He’s starting to look angry.

“Then I must confess to being at a loss as to what—”

“Cass, are you horny for me, or what?

“What?”

Dean looked at me. “Are you OK, or what?”

For the first time in my existence, I have misheard something. That was what he said the first time, my aural memory told me. He was just checking that I was OK.

“I’m fine,” I said, aware that human senses will not pick up on my moment of confusion. “I confess am distracted by Michael.”

But Dean shook his head. “No, you said you were at a loss about something.”

“The best strategy against Michael.” This was the first time I had been defensive with Dean. I disliked it intensely. I got hold of myself with some difficulty. “I’m thrown off by his—”

“Castiel,” Dean said, like I have heard parents say to their children when they’re being difficult. I found I liked this even less than feeling defensive. “Look at me.”

Nonplussed, I looked. Same lovely green eyes, oddly pretty for a man who was in no way—ah, human speech was complicating my thoughts again. If I could sing it, it would be precisely what I meant. There was nothing effeminate about Dean, but “effeminate” in the male context is fraught with negativity it does not need, as though delicate aspects are—oh dear, even the word “delicate” isn’t working. Dean is not delicate.

Dean is exquisite.

“I am looking at you, Dean,” I said, although I was quite aware that I wasn’t “looking” at him. With his hunter’s instinct, he had figured out my hiding strategy.

“Cass,” he said next, and it was odd the way he said it. I’m not sure I’d ever heard him say my name that way, anybody’s name that way, before. I’ve taken many blows in battle that didn’t weaken me the way that one uttered syllable did.

If asked, at that moment I would have given my blade to have Sam or Jack walk in with news of a new hunt. In a romantic comedy, the wacky neighbor would show up right now with some wild sexual discussion of underwear or complaining about not being able to sell their salt-and-pepper shaker collection on eBay.

Instead, I was not really looking at Dean, and Dean knew it. Dean, meanwhile, was looking at me, and I didn’t like it. It’s been years since Dean has done more than glance at me, and in his indifference I found safety. This sudden need of his to scrutinize was only making it clear he didn’t like what he saw.

Ah, and now it was my turn to feel “effeminate,” and what a poisonous term that was now. I saw why human men use it to turn off an emotion or behavior they didn’t like. It wasn’t hatred of women as much as it was just foreign, which is odd. I’m an angel, and thus neither male nor female. But I have been inhabiting a human male body for years without a break. I lived as a human in this form, with male genitalia and male hormones and male balance and form. To stop behavior I didn’t want, I could call the behavior childish, but that wasn’t as foreign to me now as “female.” It made no sense, but it was true.

Being unable to meet Dean’s eyes made me feel weak. I have taken on the hounds and demons of hell. I have slaughtered the enemy on the battlefield. I damn well wasn’t going to be weak because Dean Winchester decided he wanted to look me in the eye.

So, I looked back at him. The green of Dean’s eyes makes me think of a perpetual Tuesday afternoon of an autistic man who drowned in a bathtub. They are the color of hope in that light over the water in _The Great Gatsby_. They are new leaves and fresh, hopeful shoots of grass.

“I’m sorry for the way I feel.”

He frowned at me. I hadn’t meant to speak that aloud.

“Dean.” Yes, that was a good beginning. “We’ve known each other for some time now.” Oh, that wasn’t very good. I shook it off and tried again. “I believe we’ve spent enough time in each other’s company that we can come to an understanding.”

Dean was frowning deeply now. “An understanding about what?”

I searched for the “bromance” language I needed. “You said once I was a brother to you and Sam. I feel the same way about you.”

He nodded, once, rather stiffly. “A brother.”

“Yes. It’s all the truer now, as we are all fathers to Jack.”

And then Dean committed an act of cruelty I would have thought beyond him. And I’ve seen him torturing souls in Hell.

Dean shook his head. “I don’t think that really tracks anymore, Cass.”

I raised my chin, ready for the blow, even as Dean continued, “A little too much water under that bridge.”

I nodded. “I understand, Dean.”

He shook his head. “No, I really don’t think you do.” And then he took a step closer to me, very much encroaching on my personal space, and kissed me.

He stepped back, looking at me, a hint of a smile on his lips.

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“Because we both wanted me to.”

I considered that. Had I wanted him to kiss me? His lips had been dry, the touch of them gentle, even considerate. But that little brush of lips wasn’t remotely what I wanted, and that half-smile on Dean’s face suddenly pissed me off.

So I stepped forward in the gap between us, putting my hands firmly to his hips, bring him in as I parted my lips to meet his the way I wanted, opening him up, curling my tongue inside him and shuddering at the heat there. His tongue was rough and giving, and the taste of him was sweet and savory at the same time.

I cold feel his surprise and relished it. He was always underestimating me. For some reason he’d decided my desire for him was some sort of challenge, or even a bluff, and I was going to call him on every card.

I took a step, backing him up against the metal kitchen island and breaking out in a shiver of delight as his hips pressed flush against mine. He was not, of course, hard, but I was getting there. Indeed, it occurred to me that I wasn’t going to be able to do this again. In a moment, Dean would extricate himself and all this would just be packed away, a memory of a glitch in our odd relationship.

I pressed further against him, feeling the muscles of his thighs, the points of his nipples through his shirt. My arms tightened as I slid my hands back behind him, enjoying the play of muscles and bone. My wings, broken and invisible as they were, flared up and out, and for a moment I almost felt I was flying again.

The feeling intensified when Dean began kissing me back.

Wait, what?

I pulled back to question him, but he just followed, swallowing up my words with his mouth, which was getting deliciously insistent. Was he . . . what was Dean doing now? His hands—strong, sturdy hands that had kept him, me, and his brother alive on so many hunts—were lightly tracing my skin, which meant he’d gotten those hands under my shirt. His touch felt incredible, like I was being cherished. But then, I knew Dean was a considerate lover. He was expert, in fact, which accounted for the way I was starting to shiver.

No, I was beyond shivering now. I was starting to shake apart.

It’s not small thing when an angel loses himself, yet I knew Dean was strong enough to catch all of me and hold me together.

This was something I had not foreseen in a thousand fantasies. I had, I readily admit, always cast myself in the more passive role when imagining us together, but that was a choice based on Dean’s preferences. I could only see him taking on what would be the more—language is getting in the way again—traditionally assertive role. So I thought I would lie back and feel him on top of me, between my legs, inside my body because that’s what he would want.

But this headiness in feeling wasn’t a choice. For the first time, the concept of having sexual congress with Dean was daunting.

I stepped back deliberately, and he let me go. My eyes were closed. I needed to get my breathing under control before I looked at him again. I could hear him in front of me, as well as feel the heat of him.

“Cass?” It was the softest I had ever heard him say my name.

“A moment, please, Dean,” I said.

“I thought you wanted—”

“I do.” I got my eyes open then, filling with sudden pride at how wrecked he looked. “I do, very much. I just needed a moment.” I shrugged, feeling foolish now. “I’m sorry.”

Dean frowned at me. “Don’t be sorry. It’s not, this isn’t—” He shook his head then set his mouth almost like he was going into a bar brawl. “Don’t feel sorry about anything, all right? As long as you’re in this with me—”

“I am. Very much.”

My tone must have been a little overly earnest, but it got him to smile.

“Well, OK, then.” He looked around the library. “Mind if we take this to my room?”

I could only nod.


	3. Chapter 3

I stood there in Dean’s room and looked around while he, of all things, tidied, as though I didn’t know what his jeans looked like lying on the floor. As though I hadn’t seen—perhaps that was it, though. Perhaps he didn’t want me thinking about what I had seen. Maybe he was trying to set the stage for our—

“Would you stop screwing around with your clothes and come over here?” I demanded, surprising us both.

Dean dropped the shirt in his hand on the floor, grinned, and walked toward me. The simplicity of it all struck me as impossible.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing. It’s impossible to explain.”

“It can’t be both nothing and impossible.”

I opened my mouth, found it empty of words, and closed it again.

Finally, I reached toward Dean’s forehead. “May I?”

He grinned again. “Sure. Go for it.”

I set his fingertips on the man’s brow, and then I closed my eyes, thinking of—

Melek and Vangelis, vibrations of sub-sonic tunes conjoining and entreating, lost from sight as well as sound and yet everywhere, twirling and dancing in a harmony even the cosmos had not achieved at its first joyous burst of creation. The sensation reached all around them, thrumming through Castiel himself and bringing his own vibrations into synch. The generous lovers shared their intimacy without breaking it, safe inside their own seamlessly matched knowledge.

Thertarmiel, wings spread wider than a galaxy, each feather’s point placed on the magnetic pole of a planet, suspended by the rolling swirl of gas giants and held aloft by the warm nurseries of nebulae. He’d held that mating display over the formation of amino acids, desperately proud to be everything his chosen angelic mate would ever want, love and hope etched out in each curl of his iridescent plumes.

Chamuel and Reuel, sent to destroy a ravenous cluster of black holes before they broke free of their gravitational cage and crushed galactic sections to the size of a grape. When they returned, newly mated, their personal accretion disk pushed aside asteroid fields, clearing the path for the phantasmagoric light they had become, rolling over and over each other with a speed that made me dizzy even though I existed at the time only as a stream of light myself.

Dean, on his knees beside his brother’s hell-grave, looking up to ask if I were God.

Dean, not killing me even as the Mark of Cain on his arm screamed at him with the strength of a thousand demons that I be put down like a dog.

Dean, praying to me in Purgatory every night, though I never once responded.

Dean, standing over the headless body of a vampire, his sorrow-struck eyes only on the vampire’s final pathetic victim, a little girl still in her school uniform, lying dead and cold on the filthy floor.

Dean, dropping his shirt to the floor and grinning.

And then, hesitantly, me. Castiel, as I had been once, leader of the Earth Garrison just before I and my platoon breached Hell, my angel blade held aloft in flame and triumph, my energy bright with my confidence in God’s mission. And then again, me, now, standing in a small room inside a bunker, wings broken, powers fading, but my adoration for the man in front of me burning just as brightly as my angel blade had once not that long ago.

And then I thought nothing, and waited.

“Uh, Cass?” Dean’s voice was very odd.

I opened my eyes to look at him, but the expressions I had enjoyed just a moment ago were gone. His eyes looked flat, and his mouth was set in a grim line.

My hand dropped from his brow. I felt cold inside Jimmy’s skin.

“That was incredible,” he said next, not looking at me. “You know, I forget, sometimes, just what you are.”

“I seem to have picked a poor moment to remind you.”

He looked at me then, just for a second. I watched his shoulders hunch just slightly, which was incredibly wrong. “Well, a poor moment, or a good one.”

“I see.” I didn’t, of course, but I have found that to be the best thing to say when I have nothing to say.

“Cass, I mean, it’s one thing to . . .” Dean seemed to have no idea what to say now either.

“I overwhelmed you.”

“Well, you.” And then Dean just stood there, and all I knew was that he wanted me to leave.

“Goodnight, Dean,” I said, and I left.

He didn’t answer, and I was outside the bunker before I really started paying attention to anything again. It was dark, but I was still enough of an angel that it didn’t matter.

I looked up at the stars and thought again of Melek and Vangelis, Thertarmiel and Govad, Chamuel and Reuel. Oddly, they brought me comfort, knowing that then angels had roared out their need for each other and been answered in kind.

Even more oddly, I could not blame myself for what had happened, though I wanted to. There was no possibility that Dean could have enjoyed my body and never known my mind. It had been a wise if disappointing choice to show him how I truly felt before we had gone any farther, as it was all I had to give and not what he wanted.

At least now I had lost something I had not realized was horrible. Hope was gone—that particular hope, that is. I had offered everything I was, and Dean had declined. I knew he even felt bad about it. If all I had been offering were sex and affection, we would be enjoying each other just fine. But I could no more offer Dean so little than I could fly again. It was for the best that he knew the stakes for me. It was for the best I knew that I was not what Dean wanted.

More time passed then, and I found I even took comfort in walking. I wish I could say the stars were brilliant, but in fact the night was a little cloudy, and it was the wrong season to see the Milky Way. The air was cold, though it didn’t reach me and felt nothing like the coldness inside me. Perhaps it was simply a comfort that I could still walk, still function when part of me was amazed I hadn’t broken into silvers and shards of myself, like the way ice will shatter against stone.

Unsurprisingly, I thought about Vuviak, an angel in my garrison who had once gone on a mating dance and been rejected. She told me of the spiral of fire she had strewn across alien skies, of the drums she had made from the molten cores shaken inside half-formed planets, and of the solar winds she had ridden like a Valkyrie screaming for war with the last of the gods.

Her chosen, Parisa, had been a mighty soldier, stalwart and true. Her rejection, Vuviak told me, had been kindly meant. I remember thinking at the time that I could at least begin to imagine the pain of it. Now I knew that to be a foolish moment of arrogance on my part.

I walked perhaps another mile or two before I thought of something horrible. Quickly, fingers almost fumbling, I pulled out my phone and typed in a quick text.

_I will be back soon. Please do not pray to me._

***


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, so I'm a little short of the word count I promised, but the story wanted to end here.

I stopped walking five days later. I was in Eldorado Spring, Colorado. There was a thin layer of snow on the ground, and while there were only a few people who drove past me, two cars had already stopped to ask if I needed a lift. My assurances that I was fine were met with odd looks, and I realized I would probably become irritable with the next person who looked at me like that.

I stopped, looked around, and found a small coffee shop, Demetrius Bakery. Inside were warmth, coffee, and a couple tables with chairs. I sat at one, wondering why the owners had named the place after the King of Macedonia, who was a powerful but thoroughly loathsome person.

The coffee was good and quite hot. I remembered developing a taste for it when I was hiding from Naomi with the angel tablet. As frantic and lonely as those days had been, it had been good to have a purpose. When Crowley had pulled the tablet from my stomach, I had felt lost, but the anger I felt at Ion for his betrayal of Heaven allowed me to focus on escape and then to pursue the tablet.

Staring at my coffee, I searched for something to be angry about, but I found nothing. I could not be angry with Dean for knowing what he wanted and what he didn’t. I could not be angry with myself for my feelings or my instinctual decision to share everything with the man I loved.

In truth, I didn’t feel much of anything. All that walking had actually wearied me. I thought of lying on a bed, and the thought appealed.

With the first sense of purpose in five days, I walked up to the register to pay for my coffee. A young woman in glasses with a hesitant smile rang me up.

“Can you tell me where the nearest hotel would be?” I asked her.

“Ooh, we don’t have any in town,” she said, eying his trench coat as though he might have car a in his pocket. “You’ll have to go up to Boulder.”

Cass nodded. “That’s nine miles north.”

“Yes. Uh.” She looked over at the door as it opened to admit a man in plaid and jeans. He didn’t have Dean’s or Sam’s build, though. “Hey, Jerry.”

“Aggy,” the man said.

“You heading to Boulder?”

“As always.”

“This man here could use a lift, Mr—” She looked at me.

“Castiel.”

“Would you mind, Jerry?”

The man smiled and seemed kind. “Not at all.”

“I can pay you for gas,” I said.

Jerry laughed and shook his head, then gathered up his “usual” from Aggy, which was short for Agnes, I could see. Ah, her parents, the owners, were Greek. That explained the place’s name.

A few minutes later, I was listening to “The Voice of Colorado” on KOA 850 a.m., which warned of a snow front, and watching the road as Jerry drove north to Boulder.

“You from around here?” Jerry asked a few minutes in.

“No, but I have family living nearby.” Dean and I wouldn’t be mates, or even lovers, but he and Sam and Jack were still my family. The thought was warming.

“In Boulder?”

“No, Lebanon. Kansas.”

He laughed. “That your idea of nearby?”

I shrugged.

He dropped me off at his own recommendation for the night, an oddly curved structure called the Millennium Harvest House. It did not take an angel’s insight to know he got a kick-back for the recommendation. I checked in, barely looking at the faux-marble counters and the linoleum, and then there was my promised bed: a king. I stripped off the comforter, and the sheets were clean.

I lay back on the white expanse, toeing off my shoes. My feet—Jimmy’s feet but now really my feet alone—were black against the white cotton. My head felt good on the firmer of the two pillows.

I thought about the day I came back from the Empty. I replayed in my mind both Dean’s and Sam’s unutterable joy in my presence. It was the last time we knew a moment that harmonious.

I closed my eyes, and with an almost unutterable weariness, I wished I could sleep.

Dean knocked on the door.

I sat up, put my feet on the floor, and then didn’t stand up.

“I know you’re in there, Cass,” he said.

“Go away, Dean.”

I said the words at a moderate volume, but he evidently heard me anyway.

“No, I’m not going away.”

“I’m fine, Dean.”

“You just walked across a third of the country. You’re not fine!”

“It wasn’t that far.”

“Cass, open the damn door.”

I just sat there. Looking at Dean right now seemed more impossible than flying at the moment.

“Dean, go home. I’ll be back when I can.”

“Cass.”

To my unutterable relief, I heard his feet walk away from the door. But of course, they came back a moment later. Then he fiddled with the lock, and the door opened.

I found I could look at Dean after all. In fact, I couldn’t not look at him.

I have no idea what factors make Dean look like he could take Atlas’s burden from him and hold up the heavens—his bowed legs, his square shoulders, the symmetry of his face. But he looked like that now, standing in the doorway of some three-star hotel in jeans, work boots, a beige Henley, and a dark over shirt. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, I noticed, and the thought of dragging my lips along that stubble almost made me moan out loud.

“I want it,” he said.

I confess I just frowned at him. Was he talking about sex? It seemed a crude way to refer to it for Dean.

“What you showed me,” he said next. “I want that.”

I just kept looking at him.

“I know it freaked me out, OK? I know I just—haven’t you ever been overwhelmed? I was overwhelmed, OK? I had to think about it.” With a scowl, he pushed the door shut behind him and marched up to me. I stood automatically to face him. Besides, I didn’t want my face anywhere near his belt at the moment.

“You’re a freakin’ angel of the Lord, Cass,” he said next. “And not the Chuck version of the Lord, either. This was back when God was acting like God, smiting and answering prayers. You pulled me out of hell. You’ve lived for thousands of years.”

“I’m aware of all this, Dean.”

“And, so, yeah, I kinda forgot about all that. And then, damnit.” Dean looked down then, and I opened my mouth to apologize before his head snapped back up. “No, don’t do that. It’s not about saying you did something wrong. You were just you. I want you to be you.”

He stared at me with defiance. He was only a couple inches taller than Jimmy’s body, but I wanted to climb him like a mountain to enlightenment.

“I showed you me, and you didn’t like it,” I finally said.

“No, you showed me you, and I was over-frickin’-whelmed. It took me a couple days to get my head around it, OK?”

“And now?”

Dean’s face softened at last. “Now I want that. I want to twine around you like music, learn as much as I can about your wings and everything else that makes you an angel. I want to keep fighting with you at my side. I want to come back from a hunt when I’m pumped up out of my mind and screw you senseless. I want—” He closed his eyes on a frustrated exhale and leaned closer to me so the warmth of him increased. “I want everything, OK? Cass, damn it. I want it all.”

I pushed slightly up and kissed him. What a simple way to describe diving into bliss. I kissed him, and this time he truly kissed me back. He tasted like lost sleep and quiet yearning, like bad coffee and beef jerky, like something sweet that could feed me so completely I would never be hungry again.

The heat of him washed over me next. Dean’s soul burns so brightly that I saw him across Hell, and his body is hot too. Physically, I mean. He is decidedly exothermic, and even through our shirts I felt it like a topical drug.

“I’m sorry I can’t do a proper display,” I said, which was odd because I didn’t particularly feel like I wanted to say it. But then my mouth kept on going. “I would adorn myself with stars for you, Dean. I would—”

Dean placed two fingers of his right hand gently over my lips.

“Do you remember when we killed Dick Roman?” he asked, then took his fingers away.

“Every detail.”

“Do you remember when I found you at the river in Purgatory?”

Ah, I understood it now. “Quite clearly,” I said and smiled.

“Do you remember when we took on that vamp nest in Monroe, and Sam slipped and you stabbed that monster in the throat?”

“Yes.”

Dean nodded and leaned in for a kiss, but I asked, “Do you remember when you were trying to live the life Sam wanted you to live with Lisa?”

He frowned but nodded.

“Do you remember when you went to kill Amara?”

“And you offered to go with me,” he said.

I nodded, and he was right. We had already made our courtship displays.

“I no longer want to live in a world without you in it,” I said.

“I can only keep fighting as long you’re with us,” he said, then he shook his head. “I can only want to keep fighting as long as you’re with me.”

I felt the difference in those two statement in every molecule of my being, corporal or otherwise, and with greedy hands I started getting rid of the layers between us.

I almost laughed. So many layers. I knew I was Dean’s first male-formed lover. I knew that it was more important that I was closer and had shared more than any lover he had before now. I knew even with lovers he’d truly cared about, like Lisa and Cassie, I was closer, I knew more, and I reveled in it.

Of course, the same was even truer for me regarding Dean. No friend I’d ever had before, angel or human or anything, had ever been as close or as meaningful to me as Dean and Sam both were. But, as I had told Sam once, Dean and I together were more and differently from what it meant to be with Dean and Sam, more than I was with the host of Heaven, actually. I had allowed Lucifer to possess me, and the violation was the worst I had ever known. But now deeper than that was Dean Winchester, and as he kissed me and held me, all the festering horror that Lucifer had been, all the betrayed alliances of my brothers and sisters: everything was nothing when Dean touched me.

It made no sense. It was a conceit of romance. But it was still true.

The Dean’s left hand grabbed my right buttock, and I groaned aloud.

I’d gotten his outer shirt off and was working on his Henley, which would not go over his head because we were kissing so deeply. His hands had shoved off the overcoat and gotten my belt undone. I thought about using my grace to get us naked and started laughing.

“What?” Dean demanded, but I just pushed slightly away from him (thrilling as he resisted), and then I starting stripping my clothes off.

Dean caught on and took off his own clothes.

Oh, I might have made that skin from molecules, but it was bliss to see it exposed, to know what it meant to see his shoulders, his stomach, his hips, his genitals, his thighs, his shins, and finally his feet all bared to me. It was bliss twice to watch his eyes look hungrily on as I shed my suit and tie, shirt and shoes, and socks and boxers.

Naked, we stood there a moment and regarded each other. I thought briefly of Thertarmiel and his incredible mating exhibition. But were Dean and I not now spread bare and wider than a galaxy? There was nothing I would not show him now. If he wanted to see my bowels I would cut myself open and display them.

Wisely, I believe, I kept that thought to myself. But I let the sentiment show in my eyes.

Dean smiled and stepped toward me. I met him, and our skin pressed tightly, one against the other, and though I had assembled him a few years before, I experienced him as I never thought I would.

“Cass,” he whispered, and then we were kissing again. He was beyond talented at the art. His lips and tongue and teeth worked at my mouth until I felt dizzy.

It was wonderful.

“Can we lie down?” I asked.

Dean smiled, letting me know that, angel or not, it was all right for me to be the follower here. Later—the thought of later filled me with pure delight—I would know more, in a practical, applicable sense, and I could take more of the lead.

Indeed, I could have, had I wanted to, dominated Dean with my knowledge. I could have applied all manner of techniques that I knew, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to approach this as an experiment or a contest. I wanted Dean to—

I moaned, deeply.

“Cass?”

“I want you to enjoy me, Dean. I want you to take every ounce of pleasure you can from me.”

“We going to make each other feel good, Cass.”

“Yes,” I said, almost impatient. “I want to look up and see you. I want to know you’re taking everything you can from me in this form.”

Dean kissed my chin, my lips, my philtrum, lingering, then my lips again.

“As long as you do the same,” he said.

“Yes.”

I thought then, oddly, of abandoned buildings, particularly those left to rot when they were still under construction: their half-made hulls, their unmade systems, their vast expanses of nothing. Just nothing.

I had never thought of myself as empty before. Lonely, yes, but not empty. Only as Dean began to fill the hollow of my chest, the emptiness of my thoughts, had I realized how hollow I was.

Now, as we kissed and he walked me back a few steps to the bed, I knew the places inside were not just filled with Dean, but with myself, with the person I had become once I knew Dean, and Sam, and Charlie, and Bobby, and Jody, and Claire—lovely, damaged, fierce Claire. I had become a community, and every voice inside me clamored for Dean in its own tone.

“Dean,” I moaned, just because I could say his name the way I had wanted to for so long.

“Cass,” he said back with a gasp, and I wondered how long he might have wanted to say my name that way.

With a nod from us both, he reached down, grasping us both up so that we could thrust into his warmth. We’d both dribbled enough precome to create a slippery pocket, and my ideas about his being inside me fled as the incredible pleasure of sharing this with him slammed down.

“Cass!” he shouted, and I soaked in the knowledge of that desperate tone even as I came, jumping into the whited-out pleasure of it all.

I had a moment out of time then, which is something of a hazard for angels. It was lovely, but struck me as violently impossible that Dean was sharing sexual pleasure with me, and as a matter of survival I checked for deceit—not from Dean, but from the universe.

Was I under some spell? Had I gone insane from my own desire? The latter was quite possible. The Rit Zien have had to attend to more than a few of my brothers and sisters who, as Dean would say, completely lost it on the battlefield. Did I want this so badly I lost myself in it?

But no, almost to my surprise, no. I was sane. This was real. Dean was naked with me in bed, as real and crude and human and carnal as I could ever have wanted.

I shuddered.

“Cass?”

“Thank you, Dean.”

He laughed then, softly, and then yawned. “We should clean up,” he mumbled, already half-asleep.

“Of course,” I said, and I held him against me as he closed his eyes and went under. For hours, he slumbered in my arms, his face at peace as he breathed, in and out, in and out.

It was the most incredible thing I have ever seen.

THE END


End file.
